Lamballe
Encyclopedia
Lamballe is a commune
Communes of France
The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...

 in the Côtes-d'Armor
Côtes-d'Armor
Côtes-d'Armor is a department in the north of Brittany, in northwestern France.-History:Côtes-du-Nord was one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Brittany. Its name was changed in 1990 to...

 department in Brittany in northwestern France.

It lies on the Gouessant 13 miles (21 km) east-southeast of Saint-Brieuc
Saint-Brieuc
Saint-Brieuc is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department in Brittany in northwestern France.-History:Saint-Brieuc is named after a Welsh monk Brioc, who evangelized the region in the 6th century and established an oratory there...

 by rail.

History

Lamballe was the capital of the territory of the counts of Penthièvre, who in 1569 were made dukes.

La Noue
François de la Noue
François de la Noue , called Bras-de-Fer, one of the Huguenot captains of the 16th century, was born near Nantes in 1531, of an ancient Breton family....

, the famous Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

 leader, was mortally wounded in 1591 in the siege of the castle, which was dismantled in 1626 by Richelieu. The last Duke of Penthièvre granted his son Louis the title Prince of Lamballe. The Prince de Lamballe married Marie Therese de Savoie-Carignan and she took the title Princesse de Lamballe. The Princesse lived with her father-in-law after the early death of her husband. She was a close friend of Queen Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....

 and one of the most famous victims of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

.

Charles Armand Tuffin, marquis de la Rouerie
Charles Armand Tuffin, marquis de la Rouerie
Charles Armand Tuffin, marquis de la Rouërie , also known in the United States as "Colonel Armand", was a Breton cavalry officer who served under the American flag during the American War of Independence. He was promoted to brigadier general after the Battle of Yorktown...

, hero of the American war of independence
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

, died near Lamballe in 1793.

Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...

's father was a Lamballe native of Breton descent.

Population

Inhabitants of Lamballe are called lamballais.

As of the census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

 of 1999, the town has a population of . The population in 1906 was .

Sights

Crowning the eminence on which the town is built is a beautiful Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....

 church (13th and 14th centuries), once the chapel of the castle of the counts of Penthièvre
Counts and dukes of Penthièvre
In the 11th and 12th centuries the countship of Penthièvre in Brittany belonged to a branch of the sovereign house of Brittany. Geoffrey I, Duke of Brittany, gave it to his brother Eudes in 1035, and the line formed a cadet branch of the ducal house of Brittany...

.

Of the other buildings, the church of St Martin (11th, 16th and 16th centuries) is the chief.

Economy

Lamballe has an important haras
Stud farm
A stud farm or stud in animal husbandry, is an establishment for selective breeding of livestock. The word "stud" comes from the Old English stod meaning "herd of horses, place where horses are kept for breeding" Historically, documentation of the breedings that occur on a stud farm leads to the...

(depôt for stallions) and carries on trade in grain, tanning and leather-dressing; earthenware is manufactured in the environs.

The town of Lamballe is noted for its exceptional weekly market. Although held on Thursday mornings only, this market is known as one of France's finest, with people travelling from far and wide to visit it and to enjoy its gastronomic delights. According to locals, something that must be tried here is a local speciality of gallettes with sausages, apparently irresistibly delicious, and also the Breton buckwheat pancakes (crêpes), cider and seafood for which the area is famed.

External links

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